Kurds Carve Out a Home in Syria, Testing U.S. Ties With Turkey

Amid the chaos of Syria’s years-long civil war, the Kurds have carved out a semiautonomous region called Rojava that is home to about four million people, is as big as Belgium and stretches nearly the full length of the 565-mile border between Syria and Turkey. The emergence of Rojava also has added complexity to a region in turmoil, bringing resistance from outside and dissent from within. Rojava’s continuing territorial expansion has alarmed Turkey, which is battling Kurdish separatists within its own borders and has pushed deeper into Syria to attack Islamic State forces and rein in the Syrian Kurds. The U.S. is stuck uncomfortably in the middle because it relies on Syrian Kurds to fight Islamic State yet considers Turkey a crucial ally. And as Rojava gets mightier and realizes long-held ambitions of […]